This is because the original Gundam Unicorn novels were written by Harutoshi Fukui and he admittedly did a great job. Piecing together elements of the Universal Century timeline after Char’s Counterattack, he built an all-new story that helped explain the end of the old Zeon and Federation conflict.

Fukui also had a thing for Gundam ZZ, not only in terms of the characters but also the mecha, but that’s a subject for another day.

What’s interesting about Hathaway’s Flash, was that it was written by Tomino after Char’s Counterattack and was his take on what the Universal Century might become after the loss of Amuro and Char, as well as the demise of Neo Zeon.

As such, the story’s focus was on Hathaway Noa, Bright Noa’s now somewhat estranged son. Much like in the period of Zeta Gundam, the unchecked Federation became despotic and the new group Mafty rose to combat that. However, this tale definitely doesn’t have a happy ending and that is something I am curious to see how this new movie trilogy will handle.

After all, the director of this new Hathaway’s Flash movie trilogy is none other than Shukou Murase. For anyone that has seen Genocidal Organ, you will know that Murase doesn’t hold back on the more gruesome and darker elements of war and human nature.

My only concern thus far is that neither the character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto or mecha designer Moriki Yasuhiro are involved in this new movie trilogy. While Hathaway looks somewhat like Mikimoto’s version in the new trailer (shown above), the mecha design will be supervised by Hajime Katoki.

This is a bit of an issue, as the designs in the original novels are unlike anything else in Gundam (shown above) and having them normalized would be a real loss. Admittedly, Katoki did go to great pains to keep the designs faithful to the original art when he supervised the recent Robot Damashii toys, but really Moriki Yasuhiro should be involved here.

In any case, the fact that this new movie trilogy is based off some of Tomino’s novels brings us back into familiar territory when it comes to classic Gundam. So while Gundam Unicorn was popular when it made the shift over to anime, I fully expect this Hathaway’s Flash adaptation to be even more so.

The first Gundam: Hathaway’s Flash movie will be released in Japanese theaters next Winter.